The fire within Daniel Igali

LONDON - He is Baraladei Igali, Nigerian wrestling coach, as far as the 2012 Olympic information system is concerned. No biographical data provided.

But his compact, powerful build and purposeful gait are unmistakable. The only thing unfamiliar about Daniel Igali as he strides angrily through the media mixed zone Thursday at London's massive Excel Centre, waving off a Nigerian television crew that wants to interview him, is his scowl.

“No, I am very upset with that match!” he shouts, and the beautiful TV reporter seethes with frustration.

“We have come all this way, paid all this money, we want to give him publicity and he will not talk to us. Unbelievable!” she says.

Well, perhaps not so unbelievable.

The fire still burns in the little political refugee who won an inspirational gold medal for his adopted country of Canada on the last day of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and it's burning hot in the moments after his 72-kilogram wrestler, Amarachi Obiajunwa, has been lopsidedly dispatched by a Chinese opponent in a swift 69 seconds.

“When you know the level of your athletes, and the performances don't match their abilities, that's frustrating,” Igali says, further infuriating the TV crew by stopping to talk to a Canadian writer.

“I have two female athletes here, Blessing [Oborududu] and Amarachi, they came here and have not competed the way I expected them to. I am not happy. I obviously expected that there were some people who would beat them, but even if they would beat them, they would put up a fight.

“But Blessing lost to someone she shouldn't have lost to yesterday, and Amarachi is a give-and-take match, she could win this match if she wrestled up to her potential but ...”

But neither of them has what Daniel Igali had, and still has. He was inducted into the International Wrestling Hall of Fame here a little over a week ago, and long ago became the catalyst that inspired a generation of Canadian grapplers.

His impact is still being felt here in London, which may be why the Canadian team's pre-Games news conference was held in a room that featured a giant-sized poster of Igali.

At 38, the smile that lit up a nation 12 years ago is not coming out today, but the kindness remains. There haven't been many more heartwarming images of Canada's Olympic past than Igali spreading the Canadian flag over the centre of the mat in Sydney after his gold-medal victory over a Russian, doing a little dance around it, then getting on his knees to kiss the maple leaf.

He remained in Canada after seeking asylum following the 1994 Commonwealth Games and earned a degree in criminology from Simon Fraser University - after the Sydney Olympics he even ran for office in the 2005 provincial election, winning the Liberal nomination in his home riding in Surrey, but lost to the NDP candidate.

“Really, it's been good. I'm having a lot of fun back in Nigeria,” he says. “My whole family is there, I grew up there. My grandma is almost 90 now, I lost my dad in 2002, so my mom is a widow ... I was thinking it was time for me to go back and be with them, at least for the foreseeable future.”

He is back in the village of Eniwari, where he's a member of the Bayelsa provincial house of assembly and the technical director for Nigerian wrestling. He still maintains a residence in Surrey, where his partner Franca and their two children, son Ediladei, 6, and one-year-old daughter Ediere (Ella) live, and spends a couple of months a year there.

It's not ideal - “Obviously there's a lot of time management involved,” he said - but commuting halfway around the world is a long way from the poverty of his youth, wrestling over food with 20 siblings. He is constantly promoting his Daniel Igali Foundation, which raised $600,000 to build an education/sports academy named for his “surrogate Canadian mother”, Maureen Matheny, in Eniwari. The academy has 11 classrooms, a gym, an auditorium, a library, a computer room and a six-room accommodation complex; 60 students are enrolled there.

And he remains passionate about his wrestlers. He just wishes they were as attentive. He sees every opening, and wonders why his students do not. He knows what he would do, and struggles - like so many great athletes - to convey, as a coach, what he did as a competitor.

“It is very upsetting to see,” he says, “and I'm a coach and you should be positive about everything, but they are adults and there is some responsibility on the part of the athletes, too, and I personally think this was bulls—t.”

He doesn't think he's asking too much, but the great ones never do. It doesn't take much to get him wound up again.

“Initially, I did have that [problem],” he admits. “I would see somebody in a position, and I'm like, ‘How can she not do that, what is wrong with that?' But now I've developed a lot more as a coach, and so I don't expect that all of them are going to wrestle the way I wrestled.

“They all have their individual attributes and traits and I accept that, but I also am on the mats with them, I wrestle with them every day and I know the level of all the female athletes here. I came here with the expectation that with the kinds of draws we had, someone would at least wrestle for a bronze.”

Nigeria's best hope for a medal, Sinivie Boltic, wrestles on Sunday, the final day of the Olympics. He is ranked fifth in the men's 96kg class, the highest world ranking of any Nigerian athlete at the Games.

“Wrestling has become an important sport in Nigeria,” Igali says. “People, including the country's president, will watch all our matches live on TV at home - and my wrestlers know that. People at home do not care about a world championship, but they care a lot about the Olympic Games, so there's a lot of pressure.”

He excuses himself and heads backstage to talk to his wrestler. The Nigerian TV woman will have to wait.

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